Schwarzenegger

It looks more and more likely that California voters will have to bless whatever budget and revenue plans that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature agree upon to deal with the state's rapidly escalating budget crisis. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders are pursuing a privatization of the lottery in order to produce more revenues, but changes to the lottery, which was established by ballot initiative, would likely require voter approval.

If Californians see the petition circulators outside their grocery stores smiling this week, you'll know the reason: Gov. Schwarzenegger. The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert is first to report that the governor has kicked in another $700,000 to the redistricting initiative. As reported here first Sunday, the per-signature price paid to gatherers goes up, from $2 to $2.25 this week, making it the best-paying of the three major measures still on the street.

This continues Schwarzenegger's pattern of putting his money where his mouth is. For all of the criticism he's received for his more than $100 million in fundraising since launching his political career in 2003, Schwarzenegger has been the number one donor to his own career -- more than $25 million -- and most of that money has been spent not on his own election but on ballot measures to advance his agenda. Governing has never been so expensive in California.

Here's an up-to-the-minute report from the streets of California: Gov. Schwarzenegger's redistricting ballot initiative appears to be struggling to attract enough signatures on the street, but it's unclear if the problem is lack of voter interest, hoarding by signature gatherers expecting a price increase, or some combination of the two.

This weekend, gatherers were told to turn in the current petitions they have for redistricting, three gatherers told me this afternoon. Signatures on these are worth $2 per signature. The idea behind the turn-in is to fight hoarding. (Unless you issue new versions of a petition -- either with a different letter on the sheet or in a different color paper, gatherers will hold onto signatures until sponsors raise the per-signature price) A new version of the redistricting petition -- same initiative but different color paper -- will be issued this week. Signatures on that new version will be paying $2.25 a signature, the gatherers have been told. The price increase suggests that the redistricting initiative is still seriously short of signatures, and time is running short to get the measure qualified for the November ballot.

In contrast, the anti-same sex marriage initiative appears to have enough signatures, according to gatherers. Sponsors of that initiative have ordered a "final turn in" for tonight. Those sigs are worth $1.40 or $1.50 per signature. Initiatives on victims rights ($2) and alternative fuels ($1.90) continue to circulate.

DEPARTMENT OF MOON HOWLING: The Las Vegas Review & Journal takes a long look at one of the country's more important signature firms, National Voter Outreach and its CEO Rick Arnold. I've interviewed Arnold in his Carson City home, and found him to be one of the more thoughtful people in the petition trade, critical of its problems and clear-eyed about its limitations. This story is built heavily around criticism from the liberal/progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which is quick to lable signature gathering as corrupt (at least in cases where it opposes the cause in question). There is a "shocked, shocked" quality to this criticism. The signature gathering business has plenty of problem workers, many of them poorly trained folks who, for lifestyle reasons, have taken a job that usually pays them in cash. But BISC and other critics invariably propopse to criminalize the process of gathering signatures, as in Oklahoma. In supporting these restrictions, liberals are hurting themselves, by establishing precedents restricting political speech that can be used by their political opponents. And such restrictions don't stop direct democracy. They merely slow it down, adding to the costs (and thus the influence of interest groups) that progressives love to denounce. The more you regulate, the more firms like National Voter Outreach will benefit.

Given the last several years' experience, redistricting supporters should take this with a Mt. Wilson of salt, but California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez says he's working with Republicans on a package of constitutional reforms -- redistricting, a term limits extension, and a fundraising ban during certain parts of the legislative calendar -- that could go on the November ballot. Legislative leaders have had several chances in recent chances to support redistricting -- including last year, when they might have gained more support for a term limits extension if they had paired with redistricting -- but couldn't do it. A redistricting ballot initiative, backed by the governor and good government groups, is on the street gathering signatures, and Democrats have been criticizing it. One wonders if this isn't a trial balloon designed to hurt that measure.

For a man who spent $70 million getting elected mayor of New York (and contemplated dropping $500 million of his own cash on a presidential campaign), billionaire Michael Bloomberg's gift of $250,000 to the redistricting ballot initiative backed by Gov. Schwarzenegger amounts to little more than loose change from the Gracie Mansion sofa (Except it wouldn't be Gracie--Bloomberg doesn't live at the official mayoral residence). But it's a nice endorsement for the initiative campaign and the governor, who needs to portray his redistricting proposal as truly bipartisan. Bloomberg is a former Democrat, former Republican, and current independent (Note to Californians: independent is New Yorkese for "Decline to State"). Democrats are already noting that Bloomberg's own redistricting efforts in New York differed in content from the California initiative.

The governor has just scheduled the election to recall California State Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican, for June 3. If successful, the recall would be the first of a legislator in more than a decade.

The LA Clippers don't win much. But to call one genre of ballot measures -- reapportionment initiatives -- the Clippers of initiatives is an insult... to the Clippers.

Or to put it another way. Such measures lose. Always. Dozens of such initiatives have been filed in California in the past 15 years. How many have been approved by voteres? Zero.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former state Controller Steve Westly are trying again. The two teamed up in 2004 to convince voters to pass Propositions 57 and 58, companion measures to refinance the state's debt and to establish a balanced budget requirement in the state constitution. The measures won, but the initiatives have failed to live up to Schwarzenegger's promise that they would fix the state budget "once and for all." Now they want to prevent a repeat of the "bipartisan gerrymander" the Golden State saw when new district lines were drawn seven years ago.

That gerrymander ended competition between the parties.Instead, the state was carved up into seats that were safe for Democrats and Republicans. Swing districts were eliminated. Democrats liked it because it locked in their majorities; Republicans embraced it because it prevented further losses. In 2004, not a single one of the 153 legislative and congressional seats changed hands from one party to another.